RICHARD
BOWDEN
Find Your Style
B
Y NOW YOU SHOULD BE
firmly on your journey
towards discovering your
own style of photography,
but in order to stay on course
you will need to introduce
a bit of discipline. Photography is meant
to be fun, and if you primarily shoot
from a hobbyist perspective it may
seem counter-intuitiveto start
li miting yourself. Butif you
really want to see your
work develop and your
own style start to shine
through, it makes sense
to work to a brief.
Be cohesive
Any artist who has ever
been commissionedto
produce work for a client
will have found themselves
working to a brief, andplacing
a similar control onyourselfwhenyou
go out to shoot will ensure that you stay
focused on creating your own sense of
visual style. A brief can be as open or
narrow as you like, but it must have
a clear aim. If your chosen genre is
landscapes then the brief might be to
takefivelong-exposurecoastalimages
with a common minimalist aesthetic.
If you favour portraits then it might
be a series of window-lit low-key shots.
It ’s important to write the brief down
and to carry it with you when you set
out on your shoot. Once you’ve fulfilled
one brief, write down another and set
yourself a deadline for the next shoot.
Working in this way will quickly and
concisely deliver cohesive
batches of images, while
st icking to a brief will
help you define your
own sense of style.
Make it work
This methodical
approach to your work
will lead to quite a rapid
build up in terms of image
numbers. But, as we looked
atinthe last step, it’s vitalto
keepthequality control high.
Toensurethat you don’t start to
dilute the standard of your work, keep
a folder on your desktop of your top
te n images, and each time you fulfil
a brief compare your new shots to
this collection, making sure that they
continue to work together to create
a si ngleunifiedlook.
SET RULES
FOR YOURSELF
STEP #4
TIP
STAY
REALISTIC
If yousetyourselftoohigh a
challengeyou maybecome
disillusioned.Keepthe
briefsimpleandlimit
it to tenshots.
STICKING TO A BRIEF WILL HELP
YOU DEFINE YOUR OWN STYLE
PRACTICALPHOTOGRAPHY.COM 45
EXPERT ADVICE
Working within one
medium – such as
mono minimalism – will
let you build up a
stylistic body of work.
The point of keeping a permanent folder
of your top ten images is to track the
development of your work and style.
These images should serve as your
reference point for every shoot you
undertake. The aim is to constantly
improve and, over time, replace all of
the ten images with better photographs.
ALWAYS REVIEW
YOUR TOP TEN
